LITTLE ROCK — There’s something awfully familiar about this endless national debate and general tantrum over illegal immigration. And the result? Mainly a lot of anger and resentment.
It’s enough to bring back memories of the bad old days, when the issue was civil rights. Back then, anybody who urged a little perspective, certainly in these latitudes, could expect to be denounced in no uncertain terms. Public discourse was conducted almost exclusively in slogans rather than thoughts.
The favorite catch phrase was STATES’ RIGHTS! And if that didn’t end the argument, an epithet might suffice. George Wallace’s favorite was Pointy-Headed Liberal. When that talented demagogue came to dusty Hestand Stadium in Pine Bluff to campaign for president (he carried Arkansas that year), I can remember his pointing me out in the press stands as a member of the Liberal Media Elite. Me! It was his idea of a joke. Strange: The muttering, restive crowd behind me didn’t sound at all amused. He might as well have painted a bull’s-eye on my back.
That whole era was a grand opportunity for Southern demagogues of every style—from Lester (Ax-Handle) Maddox in Georgia to smoother sorts like Orval (Eternal Incumbent) Faubus here in Arkansas, who played the state’s electorate like a fiddle. The worst of the bunch were those who knew better—the “statesmen” like our own J. William Fulbright. They could produce the noblest reasons to sign the basest appeals—like the seggish Southern Manifesto of 1956. Although it was clear enough what they were up to: selling their souls to secure their precious re-election by appeasing the know-nothings. And even giving them intellectual cover.
The catch phrase may be different in this new era of bad feelings —ILLEGAL ALIENS!—but the invitation to demagoguery is proving just as irresistible to politicians on the make. And to those who can be bullied into repeating shibboleths in place of thought. Much as poor Mitt Romney did in the presidential election just past—and paid the price for it. So will his party if it continues to follow the same suicidal course in the face of demographic reality.
Soon enough the truth dawns on folks: Immigration legal and illegal will continue to grow as long as an advanced, continent-sized country—a land of opportunity hungry for labor—shares a long, porous border with a Third World nation full of desperate people eager to supply it. And prepared to do almost anything to get here. Wouldn’t you be in their ragged shoes?
Combine human beings’ capacity for hope with the natural operation of the market, and, one way or another, labor is going to flow where it can be employed. We may be able to slow the flow but not stop it. Like a flood, it can be dammed here and there, but eventually, as every hydrologist knows, all that water is going to go where it wants to go.
In short, we are dealing with real demographic forces on a hemispheric, even global scale, and that kind of almost gravitational pull can’t be argued out of existence, no matter how eloquent our demagogues. They can only exploit the problem, not make it go away.
No one seriously expects that some 11 million illegals, maybe 12 million by now, maybe a lot more, are going to be rounded up and shipped out of the country. Just consider the disastrous consequences of such a round-up on the various sectors of the American economy that have come to depend on their labor: agriculture, construction, food processing, restaurants and hotels, furniture manufacturing . . . you name it. Not to mention the additional stress such a round-up would place on our already strained law enforcement agencies. And on our consciences—as families are broken up and kids who have known no other home but America are shipped out to a country as foreign to them as it would be to the rest of us.
The practical question is: What are we going to do about a growing political, economic and moral question that has been studiously neglected year after year? Are we going to deal with it, or just keep ignoring it? And for how long?
An Army story: Going through artillery school at Fort Sill, we green lieutenants would get our field assignments from a softspoken captain of gunnery, who would carefully explain the mission we were expected to carry out over the coming three-day field exercise. Our immediate reaction, at least early in the course, was general consternation: “We can’t do all that in three days! It’s impossible, it’s unfair, it’s . . . .”
Captain Quinnett was the gentlest and calmest and probably the most effective of our instructors. (We called him Mother Quinnett behind his back.) He would listen to us for a couple of minutes, let us vent, and then remind us in the most dulcet, reasonable tones: “Gentlemen, the time you’re wasting is your own. You have a choice. You can get busy solving this field problem or you can go on fighting it. Which is it to be?”
These days we can all stay hot and bothered about illegal immigration, and have a wonderful time throwing around red-flag words like ILLEGAL ALIENS! and AMNESTY! to no great avail. And keep wasting a lot of valuable time. Our valuable time. The country’s valuable time.
Instead, let’s face some realities: The first is that this issue isn’t about to go away any time soon. History doesn’t lend itself to neat, permanent solutions. The best we’re going to be able to do for now is ameliorate the problem and, lest we forget, recognize that this is an opportunity, too. Not just for economic growth but a chance for this Nation of Immigrants to stay one, and to acquire the most valuable asset in the world: human capital.
We can both seize an opportunity and solve a problem too long ignored by combining the most sensible approaches to this volatile issue: Strengthen our southern border and at the same time find a way to put the millions of illegal immigrants who are already here, who have clean records, and who are gainfully employed and making lives for themselves and their families, on the road to solid citizenship. Or at least to safe, protected legal residence. Right behind all those who enter the country legally and show respect for our laws.
Remember the braceros of the 1940s and ’50s who came north every fall to help harvest the crops? Then they would return home, their pockets stuffed with cash for their families, carrying the equivalent of a year’s wages in Mexico. Where there’s a will, there’s more than one ingenious, perfectly legal way to solve this problem that has lingered far too long.
Or are we just going to go on fighting it to no avail?
Paul Greenberg, editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is taking some time off this week. An earlier version of this column appeared April 26, 2006. E-mail him at:
pgreenberg@arkansasonline.com
Perspective, Pages 75 on 12/23/2012